Oh, Spare Me....

Richard Cohen is amazed that G.W. Bush is an avid reader. And he knows, for a fact that Bush is an avid reader because... Karl Rove told him. Seriously.

Still, the fact remains that Bush is a prodigious, industrial reader, and this does not conform at all to his critics' idea of who he is. They would prefer seeing him as a dolt, since that, as opposed to policy or ideological differences, is a briefer, more bloggish explanation of what went wrong. Still, in fairness to these critics (see Rove above), Bush himself has encouraged this approach. Aw shucks is an infuriating defense of a policy.

And Cohen knows this because he read what Bush critics have to say, or because that's what Karl Rove told him about Bush's critics?